Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Phone-based Oral Health Educational Application for Children and Adolescents with Congenital Heart Defects

Congenital heart defects (CHDs) are the most common type of birth defect. Affected children and adolescents with CHD require special care in dentistry because of their susceptibility to infective endocarditis from poor oral hygiene infections. The purpose of this study was to design and evaluate a mobile-based educational oral health application for children and adolescents with CHD.

This developmental study was conducted in 2021-2022 at the Pediatric Cardiovascular Research Center in Isfahan. My Structured Query Language (MySQL) system was used to design the database of educational oral health application. Also; the development phase was based on the Android platform. The design and development of a mobile-based educational oral health application was carried out in five stages, including analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to evaluate the application. The statistical population of this was composed of 51 children and adolescents (3-18 years of age) with CHD and their parents.

The results of the evaluation of the usability of the educational oral health app from the children and adolescents' perspective with CHD showed that the "user-friendliness", "ease of use" and " educational impacts" of the app were evaluated as good.

The usage of this mobile application can be useful in improving the oral and dental health of children and adolescents with CHD.